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ANALOGY. “Synthetic chemistry is the ability to create and put together chemical compounds which are not found in nature; it has given us the ability not only better understand the theory of chemical phenomena, but it has also allowed us to create new materials and chemicals which are of great use to industry and technology.” https://lnkd.in/etiQ6T7 View in LinkedIn

FRESH EYES. “In addition to providing new ways to study the biological phenomena associated with life here on Earth, life-as-we-know-it, Artificial Life allows us to extend our studies to the larger domain of "bio-logic" of possible life, life-as-it-could-be. (Chris G. Langton (Artificial Life II).” https://lnkd.in/etiQ6T7 View in LinkedIn

NEW BIOLOGY. “Building life from its very basic building blocks--the things we know that life requires such as an energy source--might help us in finding out the principles and characteristics of life in general. Thus we can have a broader, more diverse base of information from which we can better understand what life truly is.” https://lnkd.in/etiQ6T7 View in LinkedIn

DEFINITIONAL TRAP. “The major advantage of looking at life from this perspective is that by recreating life in a different medium, we are not limited to our own system of carbon-based life. Biology is the study of life, but on Earth we only have access to carbon-based life; and trying to define life by examining only carbon-based life is like trying to derive general principles from specific examples.” https://lnkd.in/etiQ6T7 View in LinkedIn

POLLEN GRAINS. “The complexity of crosstalk during this journey, associated with self- and non-self-recognition mechanisms, represents not only a major driving force of speciation, but also an exciting and challenging area to investigate the function and evolution of intercellular communication mechanisms in plants.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn

SPACESHIPS. “Pollen grains can be transported over long distances by wind or animal pollinators, are mostly tolerant of desiccation, and are capable of generating a long tube that grows deeply into the maternal tissues of the ovary that harbor the protected female gametes (egg and central cell). These structural innovations likely exerted a significant influence on the evolution of communication mechanisms in sexual reproduction.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn

BLADE RUNNER 2049 predicted that a society which kept every record electronically could easily be wiped clean by cosmic accident such as sun flares or by malicious intent; bank records, IDs, property deeds, the lot. View in LinkedIn

ADAPTATION TO DRY LAND. “Angiosperm fossil records dating back to the Lower Cretaceous (130–140 million years ago) show, in addition to the generation of seeds, the second major functional innovation of the spermatophytes: the evolution of pollen grains which harbor, and thus protect, sperm cells (the male gametes) from drying out.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn

ULTIMATE VULNERABILITY. “Someday the Net will be the summation of the world's total computing resources. All computers will link up into a chaotic digital soup in which everything is connected – indirectly or directly – to everything else. This coming Net of distributed resources will be tremendously powerful, and tremendously hard to harness because of its decentralized nature. It will be an ecology of computing machines, and managing it will require an ecological approach.” http://www.wired.com/1995/02/viruses/ View in LinkedIn

PLANT SWIMMING SPERM "requires an aqueous environment and thus limits their dispersal. Spermatophytes evolved mechanisms to protect their gametes from desiccation and so spread to almost all terrestrial areas. Flowering plants (angiosperms), which develop seeds from ovules that are enclosed in an ovary, represent the most successful phylum, comprising an extraordinary diversity of species dominating today’s terrestrial life.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674205214608996 View in LinkedIn